


Death Becomes Her

by stonefreeak



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Body Horror, Force zombie Padmé, Gen, Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-02-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 13:22:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13765062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonefreeak/pseuds/stonefreeak
Summary: Padmé finds herself waking up after she died. Apparently, her husband couldn't bear to let her go.She's not grateful. At all.





	Death Becomes Her

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by [this post](https://gffa.tumblr.com/post/171135005020/gffa-mochibuni-replied-to-your-post-theres) and very much encouraged by [GFFA](https://gffa.tumblr.com).

“Padmé?”

Something is wrong.

“Padmé, can you hear me?”

She shouldn’t. She knows she shouldn’t. She _died_.

Something had leeched away at her until the could no longer hold the dark at bay. She _died_ and should be _dead_ , so how is it that she can feel her body? How can she hear anything? How can she smell just the smallest hint of burnt meat?

“Padmé, please answer me?”

She recognises the voice, though it’s distorted, but she cannot bear to answer. Cannot bear to open her eyes and look.

Her husband. Her husband who murdered the Jedi, down to the very youngest of them. Her husband who turned on his best friend. Her husband who _tried to kill her_ . Her _husband_.

“PADMÉ!”

She feels the shout in her very bones, they tremble from the strength of it, and her eyes fly open despite her wish to not ever open them again.

Anakin is a towering form clad in black, his face covered by a mask-helmet. She cannot tell what he’s feeling, his mask rendering him completely unreadable, the way his own face even with its blankest expression never could. It is unmoving, inhuman.

“W-wha-at?” she croaks, her voice breaking. Anakin’s towering figure flinches back intefismally at the sound of it, surely not expecting it. What had he expected the voice of an almost crushed throat to sound like?

What happened to her children? Does Anakin know about them? Or did Obi-Wan manage to hide them away from him?

“I’m so glad you’re alive, Padmé. I was so worried.”

She isn’t. Something… Something is wrong. She can feel it.

Something is _wrong_.

~~~~

She doesn’t leave “their” rooms.

She believed in the good in her husband, even to the end of her…. Except it wasn’t. She _died_ and he didn’t let her be dead. He did something… and now she’s _this_ , whatever _this_ is.

Something unnatural, wrong.

Naboo held a funeral for her. Anakin and Palpatine stole her body afterwards, stole it from its resting place in the royal catacombs.

They _stole her dead body_.

“We couldn’t bring back the baby too, Padmé. I’m sorry,” Anakin had said, grief apparent in his tone, even though the mask hides any expression on his face.

She would never have wanted to condemn Luke and Leia to this… existence. If it can be called such a thing. Every moment she is acutely aware that she does not belong, that she is _wrong_.

The dead should not rise anew, not in flesh.

She withdraws, no matter how Anakin rages and tries to goad her into breaking her impassive facade. She will not give in… but he hasn’t hurt her again. Not as he did on Mustafar. He has not used the Force to choke her again.

There is a smell… It takes her a while to notice, but there’s a smell of something _rotting_ in the apartment.

She searches for it for hours; through the cupboards, the coolers, even behind furniture, before she realises that the rotting scent comes from _her_.

She is _rotting_.

Whatever Anakin and Palpatine did to bring her back from the dead, it certainly wasn’t enough to make her body live again. The knowledge that her spirit is inhabiting her own slowly rotting corpse is…

She breaks into hysterical laughter, unable to get off the couch with the force of it.

When Anakin demands to know what is wrong with her, she refuses to answer.

Part of her can no longer believe that she loved this man as much as she did. How could she have ever loved someone who would doom her to this existence? Someone so unable to let go that he would reanimate the dead to not have to face the fact that death is a natural part of life.

What is life without death?

~~~~

She covers the slow greying of her skin with makeup.

She covers the ever worse scent of rot with expensive perfume.

The servants still look at her with terrified eyes and refuse to touch her. She cannot blame them.

Anakin…

Well, his sense of smell is gone and his eyes aren’t what they once were.

He doesn’t notice.

~~~~

Her left pinkie breaks off her hand when she accidentally hits it against the counter.

She stares at the finger, grey and bloodless against the kitchen floor.

She cannot feel pain anymore, which she supposes is very very lucky, considering she seems to be literally falling apart.

She hides it from Anakin and the servants, and orders long-sleeved gloves.

The finger won’t bend anymore, whatever gruesome magic that allows her to move around her rotting shell no longer affecting it. Even so, shoved into the glove as it is, it gives the appearance of undamaged hands.

Or, well, it at least gives the appearance of hands that haven’t lost any fingers.

~~~~

“Why don’t you speak to me anymore?” Vader demands. He isn’t Anakin anymore, he’s started refusing to hear the name even from her.

She stares at him, before she turns her attention back to the food on her plate.

She hasn’t eaten in a week. She’s not hungry. She’s not sure what would happen if she tried to eat something now.

“I don’t see that we have anything to talk about,” she says, staring at his helmet. He’s opened a small port and is drinking a nutrition drink through a straw.

This. _This_ is what he has doomed them to.

A man almost more machine than human, no longer able to as much as take off his helmet. Instead he’s forced to drink all his food through a straw, and his wife—his wife is a walking, talking corpse.

If she had known how literally he would take his vow that he would not let her die…

She would have run. Run run run. To the edge of the Galaxy and beyond.

“Don’t say that! I _love you!_ We don’t have to hide anymore! We can be together now, like we always talked about!”

Like they always talked about?

This?

No. _No._

This is _nothing_ like what they used to talk of.

“If _this_ is what you imagined our life to be when we spoke of not having to hide anymore… then our dreams and expectations were _very_ different.”

He flinches. The mask may hide his expressions, but his body still betrays him on occasion.

The conversation dies.

Why can’t she?

~~~~

She doesn’t sleep. _Cannot_ sleep.

Appearances must be kept up, however, so she spends hours lying in her bed with nothing but her thoughts to occupy her.

If she could just get word out to Bail, somehow. If only she could somehow contact someone outside, someone who would help her _die_.

The servants don’t come close to her anymore. She’s certain even her perfume cannot hide the scent of rot any longer—it’s her constant companion now.

~~~~

“Ah, my dear. How have you been? I’m sorry I haven’t been able to visit earlier, I’ve just been so busy, you see.” Palpatine’s voice is cloying. She allows herself the spiteful pleasure of his twisted visage—let the whole galaxy see the horror that lives inside the man.

Vader sits silently next to his master, not really speaking, likely staring at her, as he has become prone to lately.

“Well, turning a republic into an empire would take a lot of time, I imagine,” she says, not even trying to hide the knife sharp edge of her tone.

She reads shock in both of them. Palpatine likely expected her to play nice, fearing for her life, knowing he could end her with a flick of his wrist. Vader likely expected the same.

Oh, how little they know.

The longer she looks at Palpatine the… _hungrier_ , she feels.

She’d forgotten what it felt like to be hungry. Almost all sensation long since muted.

She lashes out before she can stop herself, her left hand wrapping around Palpatine’s wrist, dragging it closer—the lost finger unbent in an awkward position.

“What are you doing?” Disbelief, outrage, _anger_.

She read it in his face as she draws his wrist ever closer. She realises, like sudden lightning from the sky, that she wants to _eat_ him.

“Padmé! Stop it!” Vader shouts, hands up, but unmoving. Impotent. Uncertain. Unable to commit to an action. Where did the precocious young man she fell in love with go? How much did his spirit rot as her body did?

She finds herself flying backwards—thrown by the use of the Force—and she hits the wall with a dull thud before she collapses to the floor. She hears raised voices, shouting, but pays them little mind. Trying to flex the fingers of her left hand tells her a very simple thing: Palpatine Force pushing her away to get rid of her grip made her lose all the fingers except the index one.

She laughs, hoarsely, manically—like a death rattle.

Vader her lifts her to her feet with a hard grip on her upper arm. A bit more strength and he would rip it from its socket.

“What do you think you’re doing, my dear? I do not wish to harm you.”

Lies. Lies lies _lies_.

But even so, his attempts at looking benevolent to keep Vader in check works to her advantage.

He comes into range.

Vader lets go of her arm.

She lunges.

~~~~

Padme dies anew with the taste of flesh and the acidic taste of the Force twisted and corrupted on her tongue.

She dies laughing as blood pours from Palpatine’s neck where she bit and ripped flesh off.

She dies pulling her glove off, showing Vader the true state of her body.

She _finally_ dies anew.

This time, _this time,_ no one will raise her from the dead.


End file.
